Robert Wynne has seen the sci-fi movie “Blade Runner” 17 times. So when it came time for him to make a website for his Redondo Beach public relations firm, Wynne PR, he asked his designer to re-create the dark look of his all-time favorite movie, which imagines a dystopian Los Angeles in the year 2019.

In fact, he hired the website designer after seeing his “Blade Runner”-influenced poster of a man riding a motorcycle in front of a smoldering, apocalyptic city.

Wynne’s finished site does away with any signs of the apocalypse, but it does feature a shot of the L.A. skyline at night. That’s pretty different from the websites of other PR firms, which tend to be friendlier and lighter in color scheme.

“‘Blade Runner’ is such an important movie because it showed the coming fusion between East and West based in Los Angeles,” he said. “I think it sees Los Angeles as the center of the world by the middle of this century, which I agree with. And I think one of the things I wanted to say in my site was the advantage of being a Los Angeles PR firm.”

Age of Enlightenment

Noemi Pollack spent her summer vacation at an 11th century monastery.

The chief executive of Pollack PR Marketing Group in Century City, Pollack accompanied her husband, concert pianist Daniel Pollack, who was contracted to teach classes for two weeks at the State Youth Academy of Music in Ochsenhausen, Germany. When the couple arrived at the school, they discovered accommodations were literally monastic.

“We lived like monks,” Pollack said. “The room had two cots, one chair and a table. You think Europe offers luxury accommodations, so when they said that was our room, we said, ‘Huh?’ ”

But the environment had an effect. At the end of the two weeks, she had attained a spiritual enlightenment that would have made the original inhabitants of the room proud.

“By the time I left, I felt all the material goods that surround us seemed somewhat silly,” she said. “There is much more depth of spirit and soul in such a place. Now I’m back in Century City, surrounded by an overabundance of stuff, and the comparison is unbelievable.”

Staff reporters Alfred Lee and Joel Russell contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].